


You Don't Have to Worry

by SylvanWitch



Series: Ain't No Mountain High Enough [11]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Huddling For Warmth, Hurt/Comfort, Hypothermia, M/M, Wedding Planning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-31
Updated: 2017-12-31
Packaged: 2019-02-24 16:22:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13217541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SylvanWitch/pseuds/SylvanWitch
Summary: "That's it!  This wedding is OFF!"  What do a diminutive tailor, six wedding planners, and an evil Asgardian sorceress have in common?  None of them want to help Steve and Tony get married.





	You Don't Have to Worry

**Author's Note:**

> The title of this and all stories in the series is taken from Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell's terrific "Ain't No Mountain High Enough."
> 
> Also, I've taken some liberties with Norse mythology. As one does.

“That’s it!  This wedding is OFF!”

 

Steve was so startled by the proclamation that he momentarily lost track of his precarious position, which is how it is that he ended up sprawled across Nat’s lap in the wreckage of an antique ladies fainting couch, mouth full of hand-dyed silk and right calf full of tailor’s pins.

 

For a man only a third of Steve’s size and weight, Jean had an impressively loud bellow, and Steve, who’d been distracted by something Tony was saying to the tailor about the cut of Steve’s wedding tux, had reacted to the immediate threat by leaping off the fitting pedestal, forgetting that the floor around them was strewn with the wrinkled bolts of fabric Tony had already refused.

 

One of these had rolled out from under his foot, throwing him forward onto Nat, who had put herself in time-out a half-hour into the whole circus, claiming that she was just the best man and therefore unqualified to offer sartorial advice.

  
Steve was pretty sure she’d look better in a tux than he would, but he’d kept that to himself after the third time Tony had told him to stop fidgeting and stand up straight, did he want to end up with an off-the-rack monstrosity?

 

The straw that had broken Jean’s petite back had apparently been Tony’s demand that Jean cut the suit to allow Steve to dress left, even though, according to the tailor, Steve was a righty, so to speak.

 

When Tony insisted, Jean had thrown his hands up in despair, grabbed the part in question none too gently, and rearranged it to prove his point.

 

Steve had made a noise, as one does when one’s package is unceremoniously grabbed by a stranger, and Tony had launched into a tirade threatening Jean’s reputation, livelihood, and manhood, not in that order, which is when the tailor had thrown his hands up, declared the wedding off, and stormed away.

 

“He can’t actually do that,” Tony said, appearing entirely too composed for someone who had just precipitated a minor personal apocalypse. 

 

Steve was distracted from responding by Nat’s hands shoving him none too gently off of her.  She was on her feet in seconds, graceful as a cat and just as unruffled despite the textile carnage in which she found herself.  With a disdainful sniff, she strode off in the direction of the storefront.  Seconds later, a tinkling of bells signaled her exit from their little farce.

 

“Tony,” Steve said after he’d gotten to his feet rather carefully, given the aforementioned pins.  “So far, you’ve driven off three tailors, a seamstress, two bakers, four florists, and an entire tribe of coachmen.  At this rate we’re going to get married at City Hall after taking a bus to get there.  My bouquet will be a handful of those carnations the homeless guys sell at traffic lights, and we’ll be eating at Mel’s afterwards.”

 

Secretly, Steve thought that last part would be kind of awesome, but Tony had insisted that if Steve wanted a “real wedding,” that’s what he was going to get, so they’d refused six reception venues so far and had two more trying to get rid of them by offering increasingly ridiculous excuses—an infestation of rats, an axe-grinder’s convention, and—Steve’s personal favorite—a showing of all four hundred and seventy-two collective hours of traffic cam footage related to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

 

Most sensible managers didn’t want the circus that an Avengers wedding promised to be, and those few who were eager for it were avaricious, unctuous, or, in one case, on the short list for their next arch-nemesis.

 

Eloping to Vegas to be married by an Elvis impersonator (Clint’s helpful suggestion) was looking better and better to Steve.

 

Sighing, he bent over to extract the pins from his leg and try to organize the splinters of what had once been an attractive, if impractical, piece of furniture.

 

Tony, completely unfazed by Jean’s stormy departure, began considering swatches from a sample book he’d salvaged from the chaos.

 

“I don’t know,” he said slowly, flipping between two pages.  “Are your eyes more cerulean or periwinkle?”

 

Rolling said eyes, Steve stepped over a wayward bolt and took the book pointedly from Tony’s hands.

 

“We’re going,” Steve said, suiting actions to words by following Nat’s path through the destruction.

 

In the tastefully appointed shop-front, Jean was casting death-glares at him over the bent heads of two women oohing and ahhing over a bridal book.  Steve mouthed _I’m sorry_ at him and ducked out of the front door, its jingling bells mocking him in his misery.

 

When Tony hadn’t emerged after five minutes, Steve considered his options.  Since he had no immediate desire to be emasculated with sewing shears, which seemed well within Jean’s abilities at this point, those options were fairly limited.  When Tony failed to pick up his cell phone, shunting Steve to voicemail instead, Steve accepted his final choice with a sigh and headed on foot toward Mel’s. 

 

It was twenty-three blocks away, but the walk would help him clear his head, and maybe Tony—who had the chauffeured car—would catch up.  After all, he knew Steve well enough to know he’d seek comfort food in a time of minor crisis like this one.

 

They’d been at the wedding planning on their own for two weeks, but it felt like a lifetime to Steve.  Pepper had originally been asked, but she’d been understandably unwilling, if a little harsh in her refusal—Steve had been privately shocked that she could bray like that.  They’d gone through six wedding planners in as many days after that, and when the seventh had hung up upon Tony’s identifying himself, they’d caved to the inevitable.

 

That even Tony Stark’s massive wealth and world-changing influence couldn’t convince anyone to work for them should have been sign enough that this whole thing was a bad idea, but Tony had been insistent, and Steve had hated to give up hope.

 

Now, though, as he checked his phone—pathetically—for the twelfth time in as many blocks, Steve wondered if maybe hope is what was killing them.  He didn’t know how much more of this he could take.

 

At heart, Steve was a pretty simple guy.  He loved Tony.  Tony loved him.  It shouldn’t be so difficult to make that official in front of the people they loved.

 

He wasn’t naïve—of course he understood that the Avengers were going to attract unwanted attention.  It was part of the gig, and hell, something he’d understood—but never particularly liked—even back when he was just Captain America, Uncle Sam’s costumed shill.

 

Still, there had to be a middle ground, and he felt sure that if he could just get Tony to sit down across a formica table from him with a cup of Mel’s coffee and two slices of her famous cherry pie, they could figure it out.  They usually did, when they got their heads out of their asses and put them together.

 

Usually.

 

But Steve’s phone was still stubbornly silent when he got to Mel’s, so he sat by himself with a cup of coffee—no pie, he didn’t have much of an appetite all of a sudden—willing his phone to ring while he pretended to read the news.

 

The futures market was booming and the Knicks had won.  There’d been an apartment fire in Tribeca, but no one had been seriously hurt.  There was a Buster Keaton film festival in the village on Saturday, somebody named Buddy was trying to sell a “genuine naugahyde recliner,” and Bloomingdale’s had men’s dress shoes on sale.

 

Two and a half coffees later, Steve had wrung every drop of information he could out of the paper, and Tony still hadn’t called.  Steve felt a pang of misgiving.  Had he misjudged the situation?  He hadn’t really been angry—it wasn’t like he’d actually stormed out, certainly not by any drama metric Tony Stark himself would use.  And Tony had to have been able to predict where Steve was likely to go.

 

Besides, they had phones for a reason, right? 

 

Steve hadn’t entirely gotten used to being constantly connected with the team, for example, and Fury in particular, but he’d enjoyed being able to call Tony wherever he was (provided it didn’t disturb anyone else, of course), and he was coming to appreciate the immediacy of texting, even if Tony had an unsettling habit of sending Steve inappropriate images at exactly the wrong time.

He gave in and called Tony with a resigned sigh.

 

And got shunted right to voicemail. Again.

 

Trying to ignore a growing sense of unease and the way his coffee was beginning to burn in his gut, Steve used the private code Tony had taught him so that he could connect directly to Jarvis via his smartphone.

 

“Uh, hello?” he began—he still wasn’t quite used to talking to a computer.

 

“Captain Rogers, we have a situation,” Jarvis answered.  Tony claimed that any inflection Steve heard in Jarvis’ voice—sarcasm, amusement, hauteur—was merely Steve himself projecting onto the entirely objective and dispassionate AI.  But Steve would swear that this time Jarvis sounded worried.

 

“What is it?” Steve asked even as he slid out of the booth, dropped a few bucks on the table, and nodded at Dottie, the waitress, on his way out the door.

 

“Mr. Stark is missing.”

 

“What?”

 

“The last transmission from his watch was at 13:47 hours from just outside of Belle-Jean’s Fine Couture.”

 

“Where was Happy?”  Tony’s chauffeur and bodyguard would have been watching for him.  There’s no way he’d have let Tony get kidnapped.

 

“I have no information on Mr. Hogan or the location of Tony’s car at this time.”

 

“You mean they’re missing too?”

 

“That’s correct.”

 

“What’s being done?”

 

“I’ve notified the team.  Ms. Romanov and Mr. Barton are already en route to the site of the abduction in the Quinjet.  Mr. Banner is notifying Deputy Director Hill at S.H.I.E.L.D.”

 

Fury was out of contact for classified reason for an undisclosed period of time.  Steve thought it was just as well. From what little contact he’d had with Agent Hill, she seemed at least as competent and dangerous as Fury but less of an asshole.

 

“I’ll meet Nat and Barton at the shop.”  In the time they’d been talking, he’d covered six blocks.

 

“I shall inform them of your intentions, Captain Rogers.”

 

“Keep me in the loop if anything changes before I can get there.”

 

“Of course, sir.  And sir?”

 

“Yes, Jarvis?” 

 

“Bring him back.”

 

“You can count on it.”

 

He sounded sure because he was.  No way was Tony going to disappear indefinitely or—no, Steve wasn’t going there, not even for threat assessment.  Steve would be damned if he was going to plan a wake instead of a wedding.

 

When he arrived at Jean’s shop, however, his confidence faded.  The tastefully gilded front window was a carpet of glittering shrapnel on the blood-soaked rug in the little storefront.  The women who’d been looking at bridal books were gone, but Jean was there, dropped in an undignified sprawl halfway between the front door and the curtained doorway that led into the fitting area in the back.

 

Steve stepped through that curtain with his heart in his throat, but if Tony had struggled with his assailants in that room, you couldn’t have proven it by Steve.  It looked exactly as chaotic as it had when he’d left—god, had it only been forty-five minutes ago?

 

The sound of shifting glass dropped Steve into a defensive crouch, but Nat’s, “It’s me, Steve,” brought him out to her in a hurry.

 

“See anything from up there?” he asked, indicating the Quinjet with a jerk of his chin.

 

Her hair caught the light in a flash of bronze as she shook her head.

 

Through the shattered window, Steve could see Clint talking to an older woman wearing a pale pink wool coat and holding a tiny dog in a bright pink sweater.

 

“Witness?” he asked with some hope in his voice.

 

Nat grimaced, and Steve’s heart plummeted into his stomach.

 

“She said she was bringing her dog in from a walk a few minutes ago when a beam of golden light shot from the sky and picked up Tony _and_ his car, presumably with Happy in it.”

 

_Shit._

 

_Shitshitshit._

 

“Cap?”

It was her tone more than the word that brought Steve back to an awareness of his position, that he was the leader here, his team awaiting orders.

 

“Get word to Thor, see if he knows something about this golden light from the sky.  I’ll let Deputy Director Hill know what we’ve discovered, see if there isn’t something on S.H.I.E.L.D’s radar we don’t know about.  Is there a S.H.I.E.L.D. team coming to collect evidence?”

 

Such as it was.  The curb showed no sign of anything amiss, the lamppost, a nearby mailbox, the dead plants in a concrete planter, a candy wrapper skittering down the gutter, traffic rolling by, nothing-to-see-here style.

 

“Yes.”

 

To his phone, Steve said, “Jarvis, did cameras in the area pick up anything?” even as Nat said, “Copy that,” acknowledging something from her ear wig.

 

“Nothing, sir.”

 

“S.H.I.E.L.D. says there was some kind of interference on the local street cams,” Nat added.

 

“Anything on private cameras?” Steve asked, considering the chic storefronts with their discreet security.

 

“Nothing there either, sir,” Jarvis answered even as Nat shook her head.

 

“So all we’ve got is the word of one witness,” he summed up, coffee churning acidly in his stomach as it sunk in that Tony was gone, literally disappeared into thin air.

 

“Yeah, and she’s not quite right in the head,” Clint answered, approaching from the curb.  The old lady was doddering away, dog yapping its head off over her arm at them.  “Says she heard music when the light came down, said it sounded ‘angelic.’”

 

“Wouldn’t be the first time someone’s been abducted by divine beings,” Nat speculated seriously.

 

This was the world they lived in now, deities and aliens and alien dieties.

 

Steve took a deep breath and swallowed the acid burning the back of his throat.

 

“See what Thor knows,” he ordered, and if he was short with her, Nat took it in stride. 

 

“I’m going high to see if there’s anything…”  Clint trailed off, indicating the probable futility of his effort.

 

“Jarvis, scan all frequencies, every channel.  Anything anomalous, anything at all, let me know.”

 

“You thinking there might be a message for you?” Clint asked.

 

Steve shrugged noncommittally.  “Maybe.  I don’t know.  There’s got to be a reason they took him.”

 

He couldn’t bring himself to say Tony’s name.  He was pretending it was a stranger who’d disappeared, not the man who’d panted his name into Steve’s ear as Steve had moved slowly, teasingly inside of him that morning.

 

“They want something,” Nat said.  It wasn’t a question.

 

“Anything from Thor?”

 

She nodded.  “Thor is on his way.  Jane says he thinks he knows who has Tony and Hap.”

 

Steve was ashamed of himself for having forgotten about Happy Hogan already.

 

“Where will he—?” Steve started, but his question was obliterated by a thunderclap that shook the ground beneath him and left him momentarily deaf.

 

Then Thor was striding toward them down the middle of the street, irate horns blaring as cars swerved to avoid the crater he’d left on his landing.

 

“We really have to build him a landing pad,” Nat noted, watching a bread delivery truck nosedive into the hole in the street.

 

“Captain Rogers, my friend!” Thor boomed.  “Fear not!  Together we will vanquish this most terrible of foes and rescue your beloved from his horrific captivity.”

 

None of Thor’s words comforted Steve in the least, but despite his growing panic, he had the presence of mind to suggest that they go somewhere less public to have this conversation.

 

A piercing blurp of sirens nearby alerted them that they were about to have company, and as Clint touched down beside Thor and said, “Cops, a lot of them,” Nat turned briskly, gave a follow me signal, and began to jog down an alley three doors from the tailor’s shop.

 

They followed her onto a dumpster, up a rusty fire escape ladder, and onto the roof of a building, where the Quinjet was somehow miraculously perched, taking up the precise limit of the roof’s oblong perimeter.

 

“My lady Natasha, it is very good to see you again,” Thor boomed as she strapped in and they took off.  “And you as well, Eye of the Hawk.”  Clint exchanged fist bumps with the god, and they spent the rest of the short trip in brooding silence.

 

Back at the tower minutes later, ears still ringing from Thor’s impromptu touchdown, Steve filled the god of thunder in on what had transpired.  Jarvis and Nat picked up where Steve left off, and soon enough they were all on the same confusing, obscured page.

 

Except Thor, who by end was nodding grimly and clenching and unclenching his fist around the the handle of his hammer, which he’d set on the floor next to his seat with a ringing thunk.

 

“I am now certain that an old nemesis has shown herself once more.  I had not thought to see her in Midgard, though.  Her power has grown indeed since last we met in challenge.”

 

“Challenge?” Nat asked after shooting a concerned glance at Steve.  He realized he was gripping the arm of the sofa so tightly that the wood was creaking in protest.  With an effort, he loosened his hold, taking a deep breath and trying to control his speeding heartrate.

 

“Her?” Steve managed, focusing on the most important part of Thor’s revelation.

 

“Gullveig,” Thor answered, hand restless on Mjolnir’s handle.  “A mighty sorceress who commands the elements, especially fire.  She has not been seen in Asgard since her defeat long ages ago.  We had hoped she had diminished in power, but it appears that we were wrong.  I am sorry that she has come to trouble Midgard.”

 

“But why Tony?  I’ve never even heard of this…Gullveig.”  Steve stumbled over the unfamiliar syllables.

 

“I suspect that I am the target of her ire, Captain Rogers, and you and your beloved but the innocent victims of her plan.”

 

That did not make Steve feel the least bit better.

 

“Where would she take Tony and Hap?”

 

“She has drawn me to Midgard because she believes my power here is lessened and, I suspect, because her own power is strengthened in your realm.”

 

“Why?” Nat asked.

 

“She thrives on greed for gold, and—forgive me—your people are uncommonly avaricious.”

 

Steve reflected bitterly that Thor was right about that, and…

 

“Tony’s among the richest men in the world.”

 

Thor nodded.  “Doubtless Gullveig was attracted to his gold, but also I cannot help but think that she is here to challenge me.”

 

“Then it’s a kidnapping,” Bruce said, surprising Steve momentarily—he’d been so focused on Thor’s story that he hadn’t noticed the doctor entering the living room.  “And there will be a ransom demand.”

 

Thor nodded again, once more tightening his hold on the hammer. 

 

“How serious a threat is she?” Clint asked.  “I mean, what can she do?”

 

In what was perhaps the most unsettling few minutes of a monumentally upsetting day, Thor detailed the range of Gullveig’s power. 

 

“Is she as strong as you?  Can she win?” Nat asked, cutting to the chase.

 

Thor shook his head.  “I do not believe she can beat me on sheer strength alone.  However, she is crafty and commands many spirits of fire and darkness.  These could bedevil me and distract me from my purpose.”

 

“ _Our_ purpose,” Steve corrected, standing from the couch and squaring his shoulders.  “We’re going into this as a team.  As soon as she’s made contact, we’ll make a plan.”

 

He acted as if he knew exactly what to do, and outwardly, Steve seemed confident that they’d succeed in bringing Tony back unharmed.  Inside, his stomach was a churning roil, and a deep uneasiness had settled into his bones, loosening his muscles and making his knees weak.

 

In his head, he imagined Tony at the mercy of this evil witch, and deny it as he might, Steve couldn’t banish the memories of his own helplessness at the hands of a woman who had wished and brought him harm.

 

Shaking off the icy sweep of fear that distracted him from his purpose, Steve turned to Clint and said, “Did you see anything from up high?”

 

Clint shrugged noncommittally.  “Might’ve been nothing, but I thought there was a faint ring of orange around the area where Tony’s car had been—like an afterimage of an explosion on the inside of your eyelids, if you know what I mean?”  He shrugged a second time, clearly uncomfortable with his inability to explain.

 

“She commands fire,” Thor explained.  “Thrice have others sought to destroy her with fire, and thrice has she mastered it for her own malevolent uses.”

 

“So, fire’s out,” Nat offered briskly, standing up.  “What does work?”

 

Steve appreciated her pragmatism and the sureness of her tone, as if there were no doubt at all that Tony would be rescued.

 

“Strength of arms can subdue her, if she can be kept from casting her magic.”

 

“And how does she do that, exactly?” Bruce asked.

 

Thus began a primer on Gullveig’s particular brand of magic, one which lasted a good fifteen minutes and left Steve a little breathless from the scope of all that he hadn’t previously known of a world that had once been no more complicated than mere mortals’ capacity for evil.

 

“She casts by gesture and voice,” Clint summed up, “So we need to both capture and silence her, which we can’t do while she’s capable of doing either of those things.”

 

He sounded understandably skeptical of their chances, and Steve was back to warring with the icy fear puddling in his guts.

 

“There is one who could help us,” Thor mused, something hesitant in his voice if not his face.

 

Clint abruptly pushed away from the armchair he’d been leaning against and stalked toward the wall of windows at the far end of the room.

 

“Loki,” Nat said quietly.  There was tension in her posture and threat in her tone.

 

“He can help?” Steve was the one sounding skeptical now.  He didn’t have a lot of confidence in gaining the aid of someone who’d left Earth in a muzzle.

 

“He can,” Thor avowed, nodding solemnly. 

 

“Will he?” Bruce asked, not bothering to hide his own deep ambivalence.

 

“To be freed of his captivity, to be allowed to exercise his power?  For this, my brother would do almost anything.”

 

“But can we just…put him back in the box when we’re done playing with him?” Clint asked from across the room.  “You think that’s something he’s going to let us do?”

 

Steve sympathized with Clint’s position.  Though his own experience of helplessness had been quite different, Steve knew what it felt like to be out of control of his own choices.  Every line of Clint’s body betrayed his unhappiness.

 

“We don’t have to do this,” Steve forced himself to say.  If it were him alone, he’d make a deal with the devil himself to have Tony back safe in his arms.  But he couldn’t make that deal for any of the others—wouldn’t make it if it meant hurting Clint like that.

 

“Of course we do,” Clint answered, making a gesture that dismissed Steve’s attempt at heroic self-sacrifice.  “It’s not a question of if we’re doing it.  Tony needs our help, and this is the best way we can help him.”

 

“Can you control your brother?” Steve asked Thor, who had actually stepped back, out of the circle of their conversation, as if to give them time to decide without his influence.

 

Now he rejoined them, looking grave but determined, and nodded his head.  “I can.”

 

“Will you?” Nat asked, but quietly, not challenging his judgement or his intentions but touching on something more intimate and more difficult to parse.

 

Thor held her gaze for a span of long seconds and then gave a second, sharper nod.  “I will, though it pains me to see him—” 

 

“He is what he is,” Clint said, with far more grace than Steve had expected.  “Just keep him on a leash—and away from _me_.”

 

“I can assure you, Eye of the Hawk, Loki will bring no harm to any of you.”

 

It was more assurance than Steve felt, but he had already made his peace with lying down with dogs.  If he got up with fleas, well, he’d make sure it was only he who had to scratch.

 

There followed a period of tense small talk—aborted speculation on Gullveig’s intentions, awkward avoidance of Tony’s name, even an unfortunate attempt to discuss the weather—before one enormous pane of the floor-to-ceiling windows went opaque in a cascade of shimmering silver and an image appeared of Tony, bound on his knees, gagged, hair wild and face pale, jacket missing and white shirt shredded and blood-flecked.  He was struggling to articulate something, shouting around the black fabric in his mouth.

 

Then the image flickered and a woman coalesced out of the air, tall, statuesque, with ice-blonde hair to her waist, drawn back from her face with a circlet of red gold.  Her eyes were the blue of deep arctic ice, her dress a matching cold shade, and in her smile there was no warmth, only the sureness of a predator who has already fastened teeth upon her prey.

 

Thor strode to the center of the living area, facing her with his hammer at the ready, as if putting himself between her and the rest of the team.  Steve swallowed the sour bile that had climbed into his throat upon seeing Tony like that and stepped forward at Thor’s right hand.  Nat took his left flank, and Bruce and Clint followed suit, so that they were arrayed in a shallow convex arc across the living room.

 

“Gullveig,” Thor said as though he were spitting an insult.

 

“Thunder god,” she answered, clearly unimpressed with him, her eyes tracking to and fastening upon Steve.  “You’re the ‘Captain’ of which I’ve heard so much about?” She sounded even less impressed, her perfect pale lip curling up in visible disdain.  “I had thought you’d be…bigger.”

 

Before Steve could answer, she’d waved a hand as if shooing away an annoying insect and said, “No matter.  I had hoped for more of a challenge, but if this is the best your realm has to offer, I must accept it.”

 

“You will face me in single combat,” Thor interrupted, taking a step forward, putting himself once more between the Avengers and the witch.

But Gullveig didn’t deign to acknowledge his challenge, not by so much as even a twitch of a perfectly sculpted eyebrow.

 

Instead, she pointed a finger at Steve and said, “It is you who will meet me in the circle for the challenge if you wish to earn your beloved’s freedom.  You and you alone must do this thing.  If I see any other, I will kill your Iron Man.”  She sneered, clearly indicating her feelings regarding that appellation.

 

“When and where?” Steve answered without giving Thor or the others a chance to speak.

 

“Step out onto the balcony, and I will bring you to me.”

 

“No,” Thor interrupted.  “By the rules of the Vanir, Captain Rogers has the right to a second.  He must be given time to choose who will stand by him in the circle.”

 

Gullveig shrugged elaborately, as if bored by Thor’s posturing, and made another shooing gesture.  “Very well, with one exception:  It cannot be you, Thunderer. Captain Rogers, you have one-half of your hours.  Then I will bring you to me with no regard for where you are—or what such a spell will do to those in your proximity.”

 

She disappeared then, to be replaced by another image of Tony, still on his knees, still shouting around the gag, eyes urgent and chest heaving with the effort to be understood.

 

“I’m coming for you,” Steve said, and Tony shook his head wildly, and then he was gone.

 

“I must go,” Thor cried as he bolted for the balcony, disappearing in a wall-shaking clap of thunder. 

 

“It’s going to be close,” Clint remarked, breaking from their impromptu formation to slouch toward the kitchen. 

 

“If Thor can’t get Loki here in time, who will you take?” Nat asked in that blank tone she put on when she had strong feelings about something but didn’t want to show them.

 

“Me,” Bruce said immediately, before anyone else could speak up. 

 

Steve nodded.  “Given your treatment of Loki, that makes sense.”

 

No one disagreed.

 

What passed then were some of the hardest minutes of Steve’s long and often difficult life.  He tried to keep his mind from the image of Tony helpless in Gullveig’s clutches, but he couldn’t stop his thoughts from veering in that direction. 

 

When not dwelling on what unpleasantness Tony might be undergoing, Steve’s mind kept coming back to the cluttered fitting room in Jean’s shop, to the not-quite-argument he and Tony had had, to the fact that their final words to one another had been fraught with tension instead of laded heavily with the love he always felt for Tony.

 

He was wrenched from those thoughts by Nat’s tense, “Steve,” and the window wall shimmering to silver once more.

 

Steve moved slowly toward the balcony beyond that wall, and just as he reached the sliding door, a thunderclap signaled Thor’s arrival.

 

Even as the balcony was ringed in golden light and an otherworldly music filled the air, Loki—he assumed it was Loki, though the trickster was, in his typical perverse fashion, wearing Clint’s form—stepped to Steve’s side. 

 

A tugging in his guts and a sensation of sudden weightlessness drove a spike of fear through him, and then Steve was on his own two feet again, a little wobbly but apparently none the worse for wear, and beside him Loki stood, his sneer unmistakable even on Clint’s handsome features.

 

“Well, if it isn’t the Boy Scout,” Loki said in exactly Tony’s voice.  A shiver chased its way down Steve’s spine, but he tightened his jaw and said, “That’s Captain Rogers to you, _Barton_.”

 

“Whatever,” Loki said, still mimicking Tony and getting it so precisely right that Steve ached a little in spite of himself, wishing it were Tony standing there giving him grief instead of the God of Mischief wearing Clint’s body and making small talk in Tony’s voice.

 

Steve reminded himself that they were on a mission and turned his attention to their surroundings. They were in cavernous space blanketed entirely in darkness except for the fickle flickering of a fire some distance away.  The air was icy cold and smelled of spent fuel and engine oil, and as they began to move cautiously toward the light, his foot struck a ringing blow against something hard.  A moment’s exploration with his foot suggested a rail of some sort.

 

Loki took the lead then, his stride confident despite the darkness.  Steve supposed there were significant advantages to being a god, even if it did also mean being Loki.

 

Even as they neared the source of the light, Steve knew that they weren’t going to find Tony there.  The space felt empty and long-abandoned.  Only the fire suggested that anyone had been there in years.

 

It proved to be a trash fire burning brightly in a rusted barrel on which the letters –OCO could still be made out.  Though the light cast the rest of the room into deeper darkness, he could make out by its fitful flames hulking figures in the gloom—train cars.

 

Loki’s gaze was fixed on the fire itself, and he murmured, “Careful,” to Steve, though that made no sense until a face appeared in the center of the flames and Gullveig said, “Follow me.”

 

With a wicked grin and a graceful shrug, Loki leapt agilely into the air and plunged down into the center of the fire.

 

“Loki!” Steve cried, forgetting momentarily that Loki was pretending to be Clint.  Frantic, he rushed to the edge of the barrel but was driven back by the heat of the fire.

 

He wanted to indulge in a vicious bout of swearing followed by full-blown panic, but Steve hadn’t gotten to be the person he was without learning to put aside personal feelings in favor of action. 

 

Ignoring the likelihood of imminent immolation, Steve took a few steps back and then made a running leap into the air above the barrel, having only seconds to consider the sheer folly of his act before he was consumed by the flames.

 

The heat blistered his skin and plunged down his throat, searing his lungs and making him cough spasmodically.

 

When he sucked in a second, gasping breath, he was both shocked and relieved to discover that the air was cool—cold, even—and he was not, in fact, on fire.

 

As he patted himself down, Steve scanned his surroundings, discovering that he was standing on a barren neck of land that thrust out into what appeared to be a frozen sea.  Wind whipped icily about him, pelting him with pellets of snow and reducing visibility to mere feet.

 

Squinting against the assault, Steve peered into the darkness, discovering a hunched figure at the far end of the neck, closest to the water’s edge.

 

As he neared the figure, he realized it was Tony, who was huddled in on himself, arms around his knees and shaking violently.  Steve covered the ground between them in two enormous strides and swept Tony up into his arms, ignoring the probable danger, their perilous condition, ignoring everything but the feel of Tony against him.

 

He pressed his lips to Tony’s temple and pulled him closer, trying to cover all his shivering flesh with his own, warmer body.

 

Tony murmured something against Steve’s neck, but he couldn’t make it out without pulling away, and he wasn’t about to do that.  He might never do that again, in fact.  Steve might stand here for the rest of time holding Tony against him and let the world go hang.

 

“Trap,” he eventually made out, wishing he hadn’t understood Tony’s slurred word. 

 

Of course, on some level Captain America had been aware all along that this was likely a trap.  He also knew now for sure that Loki had played them all, that the entire kidnapping had been a set-up to free Thor’s half-brother from his confinement, and that the Avengers had just united one monumental threat with a second, even more perfidious one.

 

Steve didn’t give a shit.

 

What he cared about was getting Tony out of there to someplace warm and dry.

 

His eyes swept the barren horizon, but he couldn’t see much for the whipping grapple that stung his skin and closed the world down to a few grey feet on any side.

 

Setting out in a random direction without any plan of action was a recipe for slow, lingering death, but Steve was growing desperate; Tony was slipping in and out of consciousness, the wracking shivers subsiding as he settled more heavily in Steve’s arms.  Steve knew what that meant, intimate as he was with the effects of hypothermia on the human body.

 

Moving off the narrow isthmus and trying to find a windbreak seemed a reasonable first step.  He needed to get Tony out of the wind and try to chaff some life back into his sluggish blood.

 

Wherever they were—and Steve was fairly certain by now that it was one of the earth’s poles—the ground here, though frozen to the hardness of steel, was covered only with a gritty layer of snow, as if the scouring wind was perpetually sanding it.  Beneath the grit, the ice itself was uneven, frozen into sharp ridges that made for difficult walking.

 

Steve had to tread carefully, slower than he liked, afraid that he’d lose his balance and pitch forward with Tony in his arms.

 

After what felt like hours, Steve thought he made out a low structure in the distance, though he knew that perspective here was deceiving; it could be an enormous object miles away or a very small thing only yards from his creeping feet.

 

It proved, at last, a crudely erected cairn of rock that stood chest-high on him.  There were no distinguishing marks that Steve could see, though the light was dimming further, washing the world in an obliterating grey.

 

Reluctantly, Steve set Tony down to dig at the cairn, plucking rocks from the top here, the bottom there, until something he shifted gave back a hollow, metallic note, and he discovered a rusted, two-gallon oil can half full, by the feel of it.  Moving more rocks away from the discovery sight, Steve felt an oilskin pack, which he pulled eagerly from what he now knew was a storage depot.

 

Inside the oilskin—which was large enough to cover them both, if he held Tony very, very tightly—were waterproof matches; a tin of something that might have once been edible; a spirit lamp, its bone-white wick stiff to the touch; a second, smaller tin of musty tea leaves, and a third of sugar gone hard with age. 

 

Further digging uncovered a second oilskin tarp, what appeared to be skier’s poles, another stock of ruined food, and a tiny portable camp stove that would have been an antique even in Steve’s WWII days.

 

He wasted no time putting his training to good use, and he wished he could hear Tony teasing him about being a Boy Scout.  Tony, though, wasn’t conscious.  When Steve had the larger tarp stretched on the poles in a crude tent, the smaller laid as scant protection against the freezing ground, and both the spirit lamp and little stove burning in the narrow space, he stripped Tony and himself efficiently, pulled Tony’s back to his front, and rolled them into the ground tarp.

 

Tony was so cold and so still that only the faintest brush of his breath against Steve’s questing hand told him that Tony was alive at all.  He held Tony closer, one hand around his waist and the other across his chest.

 

Where the arc reactor touched his inner arm, Steve’s skin burned with the cold.  He willed his body heat into Tony, imagined the reactor taking the heat from him and spreading it through Tony’s veins and arteries.  He put his lips to Tony’s icy cheek, to his cold temple, to the stiff strands of his hair, frozen and only now beginning to thaw.

 

The first shudder was a relief, even if it meant that Tony was shifting into a painful semi-consciousness.  He moaned, his body clenching, jaw so tight that Steve swore he heard Tony’s teeth cracking.  His body shook in great convulsions, and he moaned again, louder and longer, an anguished, animal sound that made Steve murmur nonsense words into Tony’s ear and hold him closer still, afraid that he’d hurt himself, that the muscle spasms would break bones, that the shock of recovery would kill him.

 

Steve knew too well the temptation to sink into the chilling oblivion, to shut his eyes against the pain of the world.

 

He spoke Tony’s name in broken syllables, his voice shaking as Tony’s body battered him, and said all of the things they usually avoided, all the sweet, stupid, sappy nonsense that Tony would sneer at him for in the broad, warm light of another day.

 

Here in this killing icy twilight, Steve said what burned in secret places in his heart, and Tony finally began to come back to himself, his body still shuddering but not so violently, his moans resolving into slurred words and then, at last, into, “Steve?”

 

“Who else would you be huddling naked with?” Steve answered, trying for levity, though his voice shook in a way that betrayed his immense relief.  He had begun to believe that he’d never hear Tony say his name again.

 

They lay there together in silence for another long while, Tony’s shivers subsiding by slow degrees until he seemed to have regained control of his own motor functions, for he started to shift minutely, as if to find a more comfortable position.

 

Since the ground through the thin tarp was ridged like knives and colder than the iciest depths of hell, Steve sympathized.  “C’mere,” he said, signaling his intention to lift Tony moments before he did, using the space he’d made to roll onto his back and settle Tony, chest to chest, against him.  He rearranged their covering oilskin and was gratified to feel Tony sigh and melt against him, head pillowed on Steve’s shoulder, limbs splayed for maximum skin contact.

 

Nothing had ever felt better.

 

There wasn’t a stir of desire in him, only an abiding sense of the rightness of keeping Tony close, safe and warm against him.  He let himself drift a little, not quite asleep but not wholly awake, his brain a blue-white fuzz still registering the important things—the slow rise and fall of Tony’s chest, the hardness of the arc reactor against his ribs, the tickle of Tony’s hair along his throat and under his jaw, the warm gust of his breath on his skin.

 

Steve hadn’t realized he was stroking Tony from hip to shoulder in a slow, dragging arc until Tony shifted restlessly against him and murmured in his sleep.  Drawn back fully into the moment, Steve felt Tony’s cock half-hard against his leg and the rub of Tony’s calf hair against the smooth muscle of his own inner calf as even in his sleep Tony sought friction and contact.

 

He stilled his hand and whispered, “Tone?” into his lover’s ear, but Tony only murmured, words lost against Steve’s skin, and moved his hips again in an unmistakably purposeful rhythm.

 

Despite the situation, Steve’s body responded, and even as he tried to master the electric zing of desire spiraling through him, he felt himself harden against Tony’s belly.

 

“Tony, wake up,” Steve said then, and his voice sounded over-loud in the confined space of their oilskin tent.  If they were going to do this, Tony was going to be awake for it.  He resumed his stroking of Tony’s back, though now he let his hand move lower, cupping the round globe of Tony’s ass and lingering there, long middle finger just skimming his crack.

 

Tony’s words were clear this time when he said, “Fuck, that’s good,” on a long, exhaled breath, and then he was squirming meaningfully, his cock slotting into the vee of Steve’s abdomen, and Steve consciously tightened his muscles to give Tony more resistance as he rutted.

 

He raised his other leg to gain some traction of his own and began a lazy upward thrust that dragged the tip of his cock against Tony’s belly, and despite the direness of their situation and the battering wind and their scant cover, it wasn’t long before they were both panting, names and curses and prayers indistinguishable as they gave to and took from each other. Movement led to friction led to heat, until they were almost sweating beneath the oilskin, and the pleasure of being warm fed another, hungrier pleasure.

 

Tony was moving frantically against him now, cursing and sliding in that tight space, Steve’s arms loose around him, one finger circling his hole, his voice urgent in Tony’s ear saying, “Yeah, c’mon.  C’mon, Tony, come for me.”  Steve felt the hot splash of Tony’s spend on his hip even as Tony cried out, voice loud in his ear, and Steve came then too in a rush, blood thundering in his ears, vision white behind his closed eyes, icy air strafing his throat as he cried out too.

 

“Jesus, really?” he heard only a few moments later from somewhere in the darkness beyond their cover.  “You’re lost in the Antarctic but still fucking like rabbits?  What the hell is wrong with you?”

 

Clint may have sounded disgusted on the surface, but Steve could also detect relief and fondness and humor in there, as well, and the relief of hearing that voice again, of knowing that they were rescued, almost made up for the embarrassment that was painting a different kind of heat up his face and down his chest.

 

Tony said, “Fuck you, Barton, don’t you know how to knock?” and that wrung a bark of laughter out of Nat, which only deepened Steve’s mortification.

 

“Put your pants on and get out here,” Clint said, and then they heard two sets of feet moving away.

 

That they hadn’t heard the Quinjet land said something about the intensity of their passion, of how good it had felt to have Tony against him, despite the dire circumstances and the threat to their continued existence.

 

For that, Steve would not feel ashamed.

 

Tony did a half push-up against Steve’s chest to look down at him with an expression of mingled pride and love.  “Shower, dinner, round two,” he suggested, lowering his mouth to Steve’s to lick along his bottom lip and then nip there once, a gentle pain that made Steve suck in a breath.

 

“I love you,” he said on the exhale, cupping Tony’s face in both of his hands, holding him there for the time it took to convey exactly how ineffectual those words were to express the totality of Steve’s feelings for him.

 

Tony swallowed visibly, nodding against Steve’s gentle grip, and said, “You, too,” before closing his eyes and squirming as if to get up.

 

He gripped Tony’s ass with both hands to lighten the mood and then helped Tony find his clothes and get them on without exposing his tenderer parts to the elements, after which he managed the same, though he grimaced at the sticky mess on his abdomen as he pulled on his frozen jeans.

 

Emerging from their oilskin cocoon was like stepping into a full-body assault.  It was so cold that it sucked the air out of him, and Steve coughed harshly, trying to get in a breath.  Beside him, Tony was trembling again, and without a care for Tony’s squawk of indignation, Steve caught him up and carried him to the waiting Quinjet.

 

Inside, Nat had thermal blankets and thermoses of sugary, lukewarm tea, and bland biscuits that were probably good for them, and the medikit.

 

By the time they arrived back at S.H.I.E.L.D., Steve was assured that neither of them needed the requisite visit to Medical, though they both submitted more or less graciously to that inevitability.

 

He’d learned that Happy Hogan had been returned to the Tower more or less unharmed at the same time that Steve and Loki had departed it, that he’d been lured to a spot not too far from Hut Point, where the Scott Expedition had had their headquarters, that he and Tony had stumbled, quite miraculously, on an old supply depot for the doomed polar party, and that they’d been found thanks to a combination of Jane’s brilliance and Tony’s arc reactor signature.

 

Thor was off chasing Loki and Gullveig, but so far, there was no word on his success.

 

After the debriefing, blessedly short thanks to Deputy Director Hill’s competence—and possibly the fact that it was three o’clock in the morning—they were shuttled back to the Tower, where Bruce greeted them with herbal tea and a plate of warm cookies, Jarvis sounded mildly relieved, and Nat and Clint stumbled off to catch some shut-eye before the next all-encompassing crisis struck.

 

Steve was exhausted, a bone-deep weariness that the S.H.I.E.L.D. doctor had explained was common in post-hypothermic patients, but he was strangely reluctant to retire to their suite, and Tony seemed to be in the same state of suspension because they huddled with Bruce under the puddle of a single light over the breakfast bar, three points of a not-quite-awkwardly-silent triangle.

 

Now and then, Steve would catch Tony giving him a furtive, inscrutable look, and Steve returned those looks with an equal degree of confusion and uncertainty.

 

“You okay?” Bruce asked gently, pushing his empty mug away.  It was a question for the universe, directed at neither and both, open to being left unanswered.

 

“Sure, never better,” Tony answered with forced cheer.  His voice sounded over-loud in the still kitchen.

 

“Just tired,” Steve tried.  It sounded only slightly less artificial.

 

“Well, glad we’ve got that cleared up,” Bruce joked dryly, a wry turn to the corner of his lip.

 

“It’s just that—,” Steve began even as Tony said, “We had a—.”

 

They stopped, looking at each other, the circle of light seeming to shrink to include only the two of them.  A span of breaths passed as they communicated only by expression, Steve seeing something in Tony’s face that must also be obvious on his own.

 

“The wedding’s off,” they said then at the same time, and even though Steve hadn’t known he was going to say the words, and despite the fact that it alarmed him a little to hear them come from Tony, too, he was overcome all at once with a crushing relief that drained the last ounce of energy from him.

 

Tony looked as poleaxed as Steve felt, and they spent maybe a full minute passing a weak, uncertain smile back and forth between them, until Steve said, “We’re still getting married…”  “Just not in a circus tent,” Tony finished, abruptly grabbing Steve’s hand and holding on for dear life.  This time, the smile they shared was more assured.

 

Bruce said, “I have a friend who’s a nondenominational minister.  She makes house calls.”

 

He left it there, deftly collecting the scattered dishes, depositing them in the sink, and moving off into the darkness beyond the dim light like some kind of latter day, really hairy fairy godfather.

 

They slept the rest of the night away and most of the next day.  Steve awoke first, slowly coming back to a sense of himself, of the room and of the man in his arms.

  
Tony wasn’t typically a cuddler.  He tended to sprawl and kick, restless even in the depths of sleep, his genius brain driving his body into paroxysms over dreams he claimed never to remember.

 

But Steve remembered, vaguely, having stumbled wearily to their room, stripping each other of their borrowed S.H.I.E.L.D. sweats and falling into bed and against one another, naked and warm and safe.  Tony had tucked himself close beneath Steve’s arm, resting his ear against Steve’s chest, murmuring something about Steve’s heart before they’d both fallen into the long, dark tunnel of sleep.

 

Now, his arm was asleep and Tony’s hair tickled his chin every time he inhaled, but Steve didn’t care.  Even his screaming bladder wasn’t enough to get him out of bed, not if it meant disturbing Tony or this feeling of completion.

 

In fact, he couldn’t recall the last time he’d been so relaxed, and his eyes were just drifting shut again when a soft chime from the ceiling indicated that Jarvis wanted their attention.

 

“What is it?” he asked quietly, turning his face away from Tony, not wanting to wake him if he could avoid it.

 

“I’m terribly sorry to bother you, Captain, but Deputy Director Hill is requesting a conference with you in the secure media center.”

 

“Both of us?”

 

“Yes sir, I’m afraid so.”

 

“Thanks, Jarvis.”  He let out a rueful sigh and then ran a soothing hand down Tony’s arm to his hip, jostling him a little and saying, “Hey, Tone, wake up,” into his ear.

 

Tony muttered and shifted closer to Steve but gave no other sign that he’d heard.

 

“We need to get up,” he said, moving a little to get out from under Tony’s sprawling weight.

 

Tony groaned “No,” turning to bury his face in the pillow Steve had just abandoned, and Steve sighed again, harder this time, and padded into the bathroom, where he took care of the usual morning ablutions with the efficiency the US Army had beaten into him.

 

When he emerged, Tony was still dead to the world, and Steve made a command decision to leave him that way.  If Deputy Director Hill really needed them both, he’d come back for Tony.

 

Casting a last, fond glance at his lover hogging most of the king-sized bed, Steve made his way to the secure media center three floors down from the living quarters.  His retina scan gained him access, and he found Clint, Nat, Bruce, and Commander Hill already there, one of Tony’s nameless technicians headsetted in a shadowed corner, and Thor taking up almost the entire enormous screen that made up one wall of the room.

 

At a nod from Deputy Director Hill, Steve took a seat, and Thor said, “We’ve tracked Loki and Gullveig to Muspelheim, the land of fire, commanded by Surtr, who is sworn enemy of Asgard and our people.”

 

“Gullveig commands fire,” Steve said, indicating that he understood, and Thor nodded grimly.

 

“Aye, she could gain enormous power there were she given free rein.  But Muspelheim is defended by fire demons and by Surtr himself, a giant whose sword of flame would give pause to even my father’s greatest warriors.”

 

“So why are they there?” Clint asked, skepticism apparent in his tone.

 

“I believe my brother is playing on his…difference…from my family to try to gain an alliance with Surtr.”

 

“And if he succeeds?” Hill asked.

 

Thor’s expression darkened.  “Were my brother and Gullveig to ally with Surtr, they could wage a war on Asgard such as we have not seen in many of your earth ages.  It would mean an end to our long peace and might indeed plunge all the nine realms into conflict.  It might even signal the coming of Ragnarok.”

 

“On the other hand, maybe they just wanted to vacation someplace warm,” Tony said as he made his way down the aisle to a seat beside Steve.  Dire as the news was, Steve took the time to turn his full attention on Tony, who still looked a little pale but otherwise seemed rested and well.

 

Always careful about public displays of affection in front of the team, Steve nevertheless dropped his hand off the armrest to touch the back of Tony’s hand in greeting.  In response, Tony turned that hand over to ghost a finger across Steve’s palm, which raised in him a shiver he had to ruthlessly suppress.

  
Tony’s grin was wickedly unrepentant.  He knew exactly what that did to Steve, and he didn’t care.

 

Steve cleared his throat so he wouldn’t sound turned on when he said, “What can we do to help?”

 

Thor looked a little pained as he worked his way through a stumbling answer that ultimately amounted to _you’d only be in the way_.

 

Steve nodded, said, “Let us know if anything changes,” and turned to look at Deputy Director Hill, who had seemed content to backseat drive during this particular meeting.

 

“There’s no immediate threat to earth?” she confirmed, consulting her notes. 

 

“The threat is imminent but not immediate,” Thor answered.  It wasn’t comforting, but the truth rarely was, Steve thought.

 

“Keep us posted.  If Dr. Foster is willing, she can be our liaison.”

 

“My fair Jane is always willing to help the cause of Midgard.”

 

They all stood then as Hill took formal leave of Thor, and after the screen went blank, plunging the room into the dim blue illumination of monitors, they looked at each other, feeling, Steve imagined, like he did—helpless, uncomfortable with that helplessness, and slightly relieved.

 

Maybe that last part was just him, but Steve wasn’t ready to give up the fragile peace he’d so recently discovered.  He wanted a few days, at least, to wallow in the sense that he and Tony were on the same page about their lives together.

 

He wanted—he _deserved_ —just a few days of peace and quiet and a private, informal ceremony before their closest friends, making official something Steve had long known was true.

 

He loved Tony.  Tony loved him.  They were together until the wheels fell off or the world ended, whichever came first.

 

“Hey, Bruce,” Steve said as Tony stopped beside him, shoulders brushing.

 

“About that minister friend of yours,” Tony continued for him, grinning.

 

“She free today?” they said together.

 


End file.
